Interview with Jimmy Carter of the Blind Boys of Alabama | Sound Authors Radio

October 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: That’s a song by the Blind Boys of Alabama called Down by the Riverside off of their newest album Down in New Orleans. It’s my honor to welcome to the show legendary singer Jimmy Lee Carter and he’s one of the original members from the Alabama Institute for Negro Blind and the Happy Land Jubilee Singers. They were the precursor to the Blind Boys of Alabama. It’s been almost 70 years, this group in the making and they’re still singing like their 21 years old. Welcome to the show Jimmy Lee Carter. Hi, how are you doing?

Jimmy Lee Carter: I’m doing good, how are you?

Dr. Kent: I’m great. Tell me about this long career in the business.

Jimmy Lee Carter: Well, we got started early you know and we’ve been singing ever since.

Dr. Kent: I mean the success is amazing; the Grammy awards from 2002 to 2005; you’re in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame; you’ve recorded with everyone from Ben Harper to Prince coming on stage. How does it feel to be so high in the music industry right now?

Jimmy Lee Carter: You know, we feel honored to have these guys to come on to join our set. Prince came on stage one night and we had the honor to be with Aaron Neville, Ben Harper, a whole lot of folks so we feel honored to be with these people and they love the Gospel and they love the blind boys and we love them too, that’s the way it is.

Dr. Kent: Do you remember those early records? Sweet honey in the rocks, The Sermon, When I Lost My Mother and all those records from the 40s and 50s and all that?

Jimmy Lee Carter: Yes, that was done, Sweet Honey in the Rocks was done I think in 1948. When I Lost My Mother was done in 1950 or 51 on a special day.

Dr. Kent: How has the industry changed since then? How does it feel different nowadays?

Jimmy Lee Carter: When the blind boys started out, we started with just one acoustic guitar, that’s all we had. Now we have a complete four-piece band, we have a lead guitar, bass guitar, a sweet guitar and drums. Now we’ve added a keyboard so that’s the way the times have changed. Years have changed and we have to change with the times.

Dr. Kent: Also right now we’re in the middle of the political season. Have you all taken a position on politics?

Jimmy Lee Carter: I haven’t taken a position; I don’t really get into politics. I leave that alone. I have my preference; I’m not going to tell you what it is but I have one.

Dr. Kent: How was it for you? You’re in the forefront of what’s happened with Ben Harper for example. You’re in front of a new audience. Ben Harpers fans run from teenagers all the way up to who knows how old. How does it feel to be in front of different audiences?

Jimmy Lee Carter: What you’ve got to understand about Ben Harper, he came out of the church. All of the people that we are associated with, most of them came out of the church. They just chose another profession. We stayed with Gospel because that’s how we were growed up. The Blind Boys were grown in a Christian environment and we were determined to stay with Gospel. We were offered many chances to go another way but we decided not to do that. We will stay where we are and we will not deviate from that because we promised God that we would serve him.

Dr. Kent: When you sing the Gospel for this many years, do you still feel the same feelings you felt when you were a little boy in church singing the same songs?

Jimmy Lee Carter: When I started out, I knew I had a gift to sing when I was five years old. I used to sing around the house and when I was seven I went to the school and met the other guys up there. We started singing together and that’s where my career started off. When my mom took me to school I was seven years old and I got up there and I knew I could sing a little bit so we started singing together in the choir. From that, that’s where we got started.

Dr. Kent: Were your parents good singers?

Jimmy Lee Carter: My mom could sing a little bit but my dad was a whistler. He loved to whistle. He was a great whistler in the day but we all were Christian folk.

Dr. Kent: Now the Blind Boys; do you always elect new members to that? How do you keep it running for 70 years?

Jimmy Lee Carter: Well you know, they come and go. We had one pass away in 2005 and we replaced him. We had another one, he’s still alive but he had health problems and isn’t able to travel anymore so we had to replace him. We keep searching until we find who we’re looking for. We’ve got some fine young men now and they’re doing well. So we made some changes with the Blind Boys but we’re hanging in there.

Dr. Kent: This latest album Down in New Orleans, we’re going to listen to one more track off that in a minute called Free At Last. We just listened to Down by the Riverside. These are tributes to New Orleans and that’s been a city that’s really been hurting in the last few years and something we’re all thinking about. How does it feel to do this tribute album featuring some of your New Orleans friends, the Hot Eight, Allen Toussaint and the Preservation of the Jazz Band?

Jimmy Lee Carter: When we decided to do this album our producer came up with the idea to go down to New Orleans and get these musicians who are very good. We thought about how Katrina had left the city of New Orleans so devastated. So when we got down there we told the people that we couldn’t help them build their houses back, we couldn’t use a hammer or a nail because we couldn’t see.

But we could bring encouragement and hope to them through our music and so we sang to them. We got this record together with the musicians at Celebration Hall and we told the folk that we couldn’t help them build a house but we could encourage them through our music and I think that’s what we did. New Orleans is on its way back.

Dr. Kent: It is a beautiful album; it’s full of life, full of soul, just like all of the Blind Boys records.

Jimmy Lee Carter: Thank you so much for saying that.

Dr. Kent: When you keep singing the Gospel I guess it will always have that soul.

Jimmy Lee Carter: Oh, we’re going to try to.

Dr. Kent: Thank you so much for chatting with me. I’ve been speaking with the legendary Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Lee Carter: Thank you my friend. You’re very easy to talk to, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kent: Their website is blindboys.com. The newest album called Down in New Orleans; it’s a great CD, has raving reviews from The Rolling Stone, USA Today and more. We can check them out all over the web, just Google the Blind Boys of Alabama. It’s been such an honor and now a track from Down in New Orleans called Free at Last.

[Music]

Posted by admin | Filed Under Gospel, TRANSCRIPTS, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Interview with Don Rigsby | Sound Authors Radio

October 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. On the fourth part of each show we feature an author of sound and very fittingly Don Rigsby is also a director of Moorehead State University’s Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, at least he was. His albums are education to a lot of musicians out there. Welcome to the show Don Rigsby.

Don Rigsby: Well thank you and yes I am still the director here.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about the center for traditional music.

Don Rigsby: Well, its part of Moorehead State University as you already stated and we’re kind of a young program. It’s relatively in its infancy. It’s about a seven year old program and we are the only four year institution in the state of Kentucky to offer a minor in traditional music that can be obtained through our department of music. We’re also in the process of raising funds to build an 18,000 square foot facility that will house a whole host of enterprises that are involved with traditional music.

Dr. Kent: How did you get into the business?

Don Rigsby: The music business?

Dr. Kent: Yeah.

Don Rigsby: As a child I had parents that loved the music, particularly my father and I had a brother that was a really good musician and I was just to be honest about it a little bit jealous. I wanted to get the same adoration that my brother got.

Dr. Kent: I’ve heard tell that Keith Whitley came out into the audience and put you back on the stage. That must have been an impetus too.

Don Rigsby: Oh yeah but at that point in time I was already enthralled with the music and for my sixth birthday my dad and mom took me to see the legendary Ralph Stanley. Keith was the lead singer for the band at the time. I’d gotten to go to that concert at the Paramount Art Center in Ashland, Kentucky. At the time, it was just the Paramount Theater. Keith, being a friend of the family came out to greet me and he had a quick conversation with my dad and scooped me up and put me on his shoulders and carried my backstage to meet Ralph Stanley.

At six years old on my sixth birthday. I’ll never ever forget it. It was kind of like one of those surreal moments that we have in our lives where it’s a life altering experience. I never ever forgot it and Ralph never forgot me. We’ve been friends ever since. I mean I’ve known him for 30-40 years now.

Dr. Kent: Wow. His music is so amazing because it’s as ancient as the hills and you have that same kind of sound. A lot of bluegrass lacks that lonesome sound but yours brings it right back.

Don Rigsby: Well, I embrace that. I mean it’s easy I guess for me than some because I grew up with that. I mean that’s part of me and I like the other stuff too. I’m not trying to downplay anything that anyone else does because you know art is a very personal thing. You feel that to your core but this is a little bit deeper than that because there’s a fellow named Ron Thomason in the band Dry Branch Fire Squad and he wrote about something that I had recorded once that you could hear the roots and what I was doing, but he said about a tree he said you know there’s rocks and stuff in those roots. And that’s true I mean because where I grew up and still reside, it’s not an easy kind of an existence. That’s kind of engrained in my art if that makes any sense.

Dr. Kent: Oh yeah and right now especially is not an easy time in all of this economic trouble and all of that.

Don Rigsby: Yes, and it kind of harkens back. I mean with the economy in the shape that its in, it harkens back to more agrarian times when people were kind of having to live hand to mouth and fight for every bite that they got to eat and everything they got to do. I can see it getting worse before it ever gets better. You know it’s kind of that way now and it’s coming out in music and it comes out in my music, in my performances and it makes people more aggressive with what they do. It’s just by nature that the human spirit gets that way I think.

Dr. Kent: Well, here’s a song from Don Rigsby’s latest album. Don Rigsby and Midnight Call Hillbilly Heartache. The song is called These Golden Fields. Let’s listen a little bit.

[Song 05:33-08:08]

Dr. Kent: What a beautiful song; These Golden Fields from Hillbilly Heartache by Don Rigsby and Midnight Call. How did you go about choosing the members in that band Midnight Call?

Don Rigsby: Well, the guys in the band you know have kind of chosen me in a way. I mean its kind of a process of we get together and do a lot of playing and whoever suits my kind of style of music and not everybody does. Not everybody is kind of keen on it I mean.

Dr. Kent: In your style of music, your first album back in what was it? 1998; its gospel music. It’s slow and beautiful with harmonies. It’s reminiscent of the old time gospel songs. And then you’ve got songs like Louise on what album was that? That thing flies.

Don Rigsby: Yeah, that’s on the Empty Old Mailbox CD.

Dr. Kent: So you’ve got guys that have to play fast and at the same time have soul.

Don Rigsby: Yeah, that’s the whole point. We run the whole gamut. I mean you’re liable to encounter practically anything in what I’m doing. I mean I’m not one dimensional, I’m a multi-faceted person. I like lots of things and try to incorporate a little bit of all of it in what I do.

Dr. Kent: So what do you enjoy the most?

Don Rigsby: Well, I don’t have any one thing that I like the most. I guess if it was any one kind of music that I can listen to the most its still the old Stanley Brothers stuff. I can sit and listen to that and just marvel at the simplicity and beauty of it. lyrically I think Carter Stanley as an author of songs, he was probably the most gifted for writing timeless things because the songs he wrote even in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s still apply today. None of them have lost their zeal for me and I don’t think anyone else.

Dr. Kent: The sound of the two of them and I’m not good at knowing the names of the recordings but there’s one recording with the two of them at midnight one night and it’s just a gorgeous sound. It’s so soft.

Don Rigsby: I know the one you’re talking about – An Evening Long Ago.

Dr. Kent: That’s it. There’s so much soft soul in those songs.

Don Rigsby: That’s the kind of thing that’s so intimate. You don’t get a lot of insight into what they were really all about except with little glimpses like that. And I might have a little more than the average person because I know Ralph so well and I spent my teen years around him a lot just sitting and listening to him tell stories and talk and just soaking it up like a sponge.

It meant so much to me to have that kind of relationship and any time that his band was performing within 100 miles of where I lived, I would go. And he’d just take me on the bus and we’d sit and talk and talk and talk. He’d tell me stories about the old days and I’d learn a whole lot about him and Carter on the road but you know also was when they were boys growing up, the adventures they’d get into. And you could learn from that you could kind of get an idea of where the songs came from.

Dr. Kent: I’ll bet. It’s been a real pleasure; I wish I could speak to you for weeks. Don Rigsby’s latest album is called Hillbilly Heartache and we can visit him online at donrigsby.com. Thank you so much, it’s been an honor.

Don Rigsby: Thanks for the opportunity.

Dr. Kent: There’s one more song we’re going to play; hillbilly heartache on the way out here from Hillbilly Heartache, the album.

[Music]

Posted by admin | Filed Under Gospel, Bluegrass, TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Andrew Calhoun | Wise Voice

October 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Andrew Calhoun [17:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Andrew Calhoun was a true pleasure to interview. Here is a lengthy excerpt from his autobiographical bio on his website:

My songs prove useful for certain people at certain times. A man in California wrote to me: “I like your always surprising poem-songs, all of which demand from a listener a certain kind of attention. I always come away from listening to one of your recordings looking at everything with fresh eyes; thank you for that, for it helps me get back to a place when I once met the world everyday as if I were going into it for the first time. It’s hard some days to remember what the world looked like before you had a word for anything.”

And so one keeps on. And mainly because, well, it’s fun. I’ve performed at coffeehouses, cafes, coffee bars, bars, clubs, pubs, corn roasts, festivals, nursing homes, reformatories, prep schools, high schools, colleges, house concerts, Renaissance fairs, Highland games, poetry slams, and on a float, sitting between the legs of a giant frog. It was to save “frog hollow,” an undeveloped part of Palatine, IL, and the float won first prize. I received $50 and a sunburn. A few other performances stand out in my memory.

At the Sheepshead Café in Iowa City in the mid 80’s, I was playing in their outside seating area, a few picnic tables, a small stage. Toward the end of the night I played three songs in a row, “The Hanging,” “Willie,” and “You Will Know God/LaGrima” and no one applauded, they just listened. An older man came up to me afterwards and said, “so there’s hope.” One night in the early 90’s at Chicago’s No Exit, I was singing with my eyes closed, and had the feeling I was singing to a spirit in the room. I opened my eyes and everyone in the audience had their eyes closed.

In my early twenties, I had a weakness for Peppermint Schnappes. At Durty Dick’s Pub on Chicago’s West Side, I was finishing my third set at midnight, when someone sent up a schnappes. I downed it, and did a funny song. Someone sent another, and I did more funny songs, and comedy bits, and improvisations, keeping straight on until two AM. People were crying and holding their sides. I drank seven schnappes, and have never been so funny before or since. Linda Black (now Maio, and living in Florida) and I went to Dunkin’ Donuts and drank a lot of coffee afterwards. I don’t drink schappes or coffee anymore, but still hear from Linda now and again.

I spent more of 2003 obsessively translating oral tradition ballads from old Scots dialect; the result is the CD “Telfer’s Cows: Folk Ballads From Scotland,” which came out way better than I’d hoped, and scored me some ink in Dirty Linen, from an interview with Pamela Murray Winters, one of the finest journalists in Folk. Well, there are only six, really, but she’s up near the top. “Shadow of a Wing” followed, 18 songs which to me represent Andrew’s stupid journey through the world of love; a look at the workings of idealization, betrayal, forgiveness and acceptance.

2004 saw the revival of the Waterbug label with a new team of artists, among them Jonathan Byrd, Anais Mitchell, Louis Ledford, Rachel Ries, Michael Troy and Karen Mal, and two new samplers, “Waterbug Anthology 7″ and “Vote in November: Election 2004 Anti-Theft Device”, our first political CD. Arie Koelewyn hand-printed a new collection of my poems, “Hay,” released in April of 2005 on East Lansing, Michigan’s, Paper Airplane Press. In 2005 I recorded “Staring at the Sun”, a solo CD of songs I wrote between 1973 and 1981.

These days I do poems in my shows - Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and had plans for a CD alternating songs and poems by different writers, where Dave Carter and Annie Gallup would hang out with Dylan Thomas and Edna St. Vincent Millay. However, I was declined permission to record some of the poems, so it is not to be. I can record any published song for a standard (and reasonable) fee, but there is no standard for recording poems.

My mother passed away on the 30th of April, 2006. The night before she died, we sang her songs she’d taught us, including “All God’s Chil’n Got Shoes”. Since she hadn’t been able to walk for her last year, the song hit home in a new way. And it struck me that the heaven in the song was not some concept of heaven, but, simply, the glorious and infinite sky around us. And that my mother was going there. “When I get to heaven, gonna put on my shoes, I’m gonna walk all over God’s heaven.” In the wake of her passing, I began tracking down spirituals and studying their history and the story of slavery in America. There’s a great source book called “Slave Songs of the United States”, published in 1867, full of obscure gems - I’ve only ever heard three of the 130 songs performed - and it includes the original, more lyrically vivid “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”, a Sea Islands rowing song addressed to the archangel Michael, a prayer for safe passage. This book is a pure source of the real thing. The spirituals were popularized in classical choral arrangements, but to me the original, wild way of using songs in participatory ritual to bind and lift an oppressed community is much more interesting. You can hear it on Alan Lomax’ field recordings (Rounder’s Southern Journey Series) of Bessie Jones, John Davis and the other Georgia Sea Island singers, recorded around 1960 and still performing in the old call and response/ring shout style. My mother was Jewish, a former union steward who shouted “Jim Crow Must Go!” on sound trucks in the early Civil Rights movement, and drove into the Beethoven School in Chicago to tutor poor kids until she was too sick to drive. I’m fascinated by the connection between the Biblical story of Exodus, and what the African Americans did with it, finding the living heart of a religion twisted beyond recognition by centuries of institutionalized idolatry and sham. I expect to record some of this music after a few more months of research. Because, you know, it’s public domain, as, in the new Jerusalem, everything will be. I try not to take these songs for granted anymore.

Bessie Jones sings,

My name written on David lineMy name written on David lineMy name written on David lineI’m goin’ to heaven on the wheel of timeAdam and Eve, don’t tell it to meJust meet me at the door…

“I did not come here myself my LordIt was my Lord who brought me hereI really do believe I’m a child of GodA-walking in the heaven I roam…” -anonymous enslaved theologian

Bound to Go, a collection of 35 African American spirituals and secular folksongs with 18 musicians/singers, was released in early 2008. Cover painting by Jonathan Green.

It’s always the beginning of the dreamThat started with the men behind the sceneWith the lotus ever-knowing and the holy women rowingI know you know exactly what I mean

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, Gospel, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Dale Ann Bradley | Saturday & Sunday

June 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Dale Ann Bradley [12:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Bluegrass/Americana artist Dale Ann Bradley, who has released albums both as a solo artist and with the New Coon Creek Girls, is known for her distinctive, gentle vocal phrasing and covers of popular (yet non-genre-related) songs by artists such as U2, Gordon Lightfoot, Jim Croce, and Stealer’s Wheel. http://www.daleann.com/

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, Gospel, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Don Rigsby | High Lonesome

May 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Don Rigsby: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From remote Isonville, Ky., to an international following in Bluegrass music, Don Rigsby has remained true to his mountain roots and made his own marks as a powerful tenor and distinctive mandolin player. Rigsby has released three solo albums. His first, “A Vision,” won the Association of Independent Music’s “gospel album of the year” award and was nominated for an IBMA award. He received the 1999 Bluegrass Now Magazine Fan’s Choice Award for vocal tenor of the year and the 2001 Governor’s Kentucky Star Award. “Empty Old Mailbox,” the title track from his third album, won the 2001 Song of the Year award from SPGBMA. In 2005, Rigsby was awarded two IBMA awards for his role as producer of the Larry Sparks project “40” for Recorded Event of the Year and Album of the Year. He has recorded two albums with Dudley Connell, with plans for a third, and continues to perform and record with Midnight Call and Longview. http://www.donrigsby.com/

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, Gospel, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

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